Monday, April 6, 2009

Despite weather, it is baseball season. So why is basketball still being played?

There are times I get the impression I’m one of the few people who are disgusted that the NCAA college basketball tourney always manages to muck up what ought to be one of the highlights of the professional baseball season – Opening Day.

The 2009 baseball season officially kicked off last night in Philadelphia, and all the other teams are scheduled to begin Monday – except for the Chicago White Sox, who start their season Tuesday with a three-game series against the Kansas City Royals at U.S. Cellular Field. Cubs fans will have to wait a week to see their team in person (they’re in Houston, after getting pasted twice by the New York Yankees in exhibition games that opened the New Yankee Stadium).

YET TONIGHT IS also the night that Michigan State and North Carolina play against each other – with bragging rights for the national championship in men’s basketball riding on the outcome.

I can’t help but think that “March Madness” stretching into the month of April is even more absurd as the World Series wrapping up around Halloween (or, as in 2001, stretching into November). Is there any logical reason that college basketball is still being played, other than television types trying to wring every last penny they can from the spectacle?

By all rights, today’s sporting spectacle ought to be baseball – with this being the single day that every team (even the Washington Nationals) can be as delusional as the Chicago Cubs always are in thinking that this IS next year.

Instead, we’re going to get a college basketball game soaking up attention, and at least one nitwit of a pundit will claim that it is baseball that is wrongly impinging on a time of year that ought to go to basketball.

AT THIS POINT, I must make one confession.

A large part of the problem I have with the absurdity of modern-day college basketball and the tournament is that I went to a college whose athletic programs were in Division III – we’re talking the small schools that do not award athletic scholarships and where students actually have to make the grades in order to play.

The NCAA made it through the Division III tourney by mid-March (just like they do every year). As far as I’m concerned, “March Madness” (which those of us in the know realize is a term that truly applies to Illinois high school basketball) has been over for a couple of weeks.

Belated congratulations to Washington University in St. Louis, and to George Fox University located near Portland. Their men’s and women’s teams respectively won the Division III tourneys. In the case of George Fox’s women’s team, they beat the Washington U. women’s team in the championship game.

ST. LOUIS CAME very close to being able to claim single-season national titles in both men’s and women’s basketball – just like the University of Connecticut did a few years ago to much national attention.

But while the Division III tourneys are spectacles that no one other than the loyal alumni pay attention to (and to which ESPN will usually devote a single feature story), television has turned the Division I tourney into an absurd spectacle that seemingly never ends.

We have to go through regular seasons, then conference tournaments to see who gets the automatic bids to get into the 64-plus-one school field for the Division I tourney. Then, we have to get the endless rounds (which I’ll admit lose all appeal to me once the Big Name schools lose in upsets) that stretch the whole process out to the point where it is now impinging on baseball.

The sports fans of Detroit ought to be pondering whether the Tigers are somehow being sacrilegious in having their Opening Day Friday afternoon (a.k.a., Good Friday). Instead, too many are focusing on whether their physical presence at Ford Field in Detroit can push Michigan State over heavily favored North Carolina.

NOW I WILL be the first to admit that in many of the northeastern and Midwestern cities where baseball is a spectacle with history and great interest, the weather on Monday will stink.

Right here in Chicago, the forecast is for temperatures barely above freezing (an anticipated high of 36 degrees and several inches of snow. Some people will think that baseball ought to be the last thing on our minds. Even the White Sox felt that way, deciding Sunday to reschedule the Monday season opener by one day.

As one who remembers the 2002 White Sox opener where the teams played despite heavy rains, I realize conditions in the stands will be miserable and the field could be drenched to the point where an actual game played this week will be unintentionally sloppy.

Even on Opening Days when the sun comes out, the event in Chicago is chilly enough to warrant the heavy coats of winter being worn one more time in order to go to the ballgame.

BUT THERE IS something about the beauty of baseball and its pacing of the game. No other sport has any position player as remotely interesting as a baseball pitcher.

Plus the “deep” meaning that Opening Day’s arrival means the crummy weather we’re experiencing today will not be with us much longer. It is anticipation that finer days are forthcoming that make the coming of the baseball season something worthwhile.

Spring Training (and the playing this year, and again in 2013 of the World Baseball Classic) gives us a little taste of that, if we can spare the time (and expense) of a trip to Arizona or Florida.

But part of the appeal of baseball is that we can literally pick from among the 81 home games scheduled for our favorite team during the next six months. The trip to the ballpark – even if it has become pricey enough that one can only afford it once or twice this year – ought to be a practical treat for those of us sporting fans.

AND FOR THOSE of us in Chicago, it is the resurrection of our eternal character split. After spending some cold winter months thinking of ourselves as one while rooting for the Bears or Blackhawks, we can now go back to supporting our side.

Those of us with delusions can go back to again thinking for the next six months this will be THE year for the Chicago Cubs. And those of us with a little more sense, we will be delusional for a day in thinking that the World Series will return to the South Side for the first time in four years.

No matter how much some of us want to think the whole Sox/Cubs split is juvenile, one must admit that it is more than a century old, and has become a part of the character of being a Chicagoan – just as much as making snide comments to the twit sitting next to you at the ballgame who slathers ketchup all over his hot dog.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: The Chicago White Sox already have achieved a “first’ for 2009 – first game postponed due to inclement weather. In fanspeak, Monday’s White Sox opener (http://chicago.whitesox.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090405&content_id=4132786&vkey=news_cws&fext=.jsp&c_id=cws) was “snowed out.”

It IS possible to complete (http://www.d3hoops.com/) a national collegiate basketball tournament in the month of March.

4 comments:

Pat Coleman said...

Thanks for noticing the greatness of Division III basketball!

Dave B said...

I'm a big fan of D III basketball. But as you note, I question why baseball begins so early, rather than basketball running so late. Baseball, as you note, has its own problems with an ever-longer season... inclement weather in the early season and in the playoffs.

I'm more of a hoops fan than a baseball fan, so I don't mind a conflict between Final Four & baseball's opening day. (Besides, there are another 161 baseball games to go... opening day is no big deal to me).

On a more practical note, part of the reason the D III basketball tournament takes less time than the Div I March Madness is because it doesn't have teams traveling around the country each round.

As far as I know, D III teams in the east, west, midwest, etc. compete within their geographic regions in the earlier rounds, then winners from each region go to the Final Four (which in recent years has been held at the same site each time).

Anonymous said...

As far as I know, D III teams in the east, west, midwest, etc. compete within their geographic regions in the earlier rounds, then winners from each region go to the Final Four (which in recent years has been held at the same site each time).

Actually, Launch, it's up for bid every two years. The Men's tournament has been in Salem, VA for many many years but it still have to bid for it - they aren't just simply given it every year.

The women's championship was in Mass. for two years prior to going to Hope College, and it will be at Ill. Wesleyan for the next two. Prior to being in Mass. it was played in Terre Haute, Ind.

And you apparently don't know too much about Div. III basketball. I've seen Minnesota teams travel to Washington and California teams travel to Minnesota, Pennsylvania teams going to Texas. They don't travel from the NW to the SE, no, but they do travel more than you're implying.

The NCAA knows about as much about proper geography as our previous president could pronounce simple words.

Dave B said...

To "anonymous" --

"And you apparently don't know too much about Div. III basketball. I've seen Minnesota teams travel to Washington and California teams travel to Minnesota, "

Well, I do know *something* about D-III hoops, but since I go to games in the region where I live, I'm not too familiar with their traveling. My comment re: travel was based on a blog I read at d3sports, which said, "It [D III baskteball] has a handful of regional championships that all send representatives to the Final Four."

Thanks for the info on how the FF sites are chosen.